From the pages of Texas Forestry mag­a­zine’s JULY/AUGUST issue

LIFE MEM­BER SPOT­LIGHT: Chrys­tal Beasley
An engineer’s approach to stewardship

When Chrys­tal Beasley returned to her fam­i­ly forest­land in Mar­shall, Texas, after her first year of tri­al-and-error bee­keep­ing, she wasn’t expect­ing much. The year pri­or, a hot Texas sum­mer had wiped out every sin­gle hive, leav­ing her won­der­ing if the oper­a­tion should sim­ply stick to forestry. But when she opened the box­es that spring, they were filled with bees and hon­ey. For Chrys­tal, it felt like an unex­pect­ed sign.

“Things like that just kind of give indi­ca­tors,” she said. ​“Like some­body still wants me to be here, work­ing this land.”

But Chrystal’s con­nec­tion to the land is only part of her sto­ry. The oth­er is a career shaped by a habit of look­ing for solu­tions. Togeth­er, those two worlds have shaped an approach ground­ed in both tech­ni­cal exper­tise and stewardship.

AN ENGINEER’S PERSPECTIVE

Chrystal’s career has tak­en her through pri­vate indus­try, state gov­ern­ment, and fed­er­al agen­cies, giv­ing her insight into every stage of the reg­u­la­to­ry process.

Those expe­ri­ences even­tu­al­ly led her to launch BeA­spire Envi­ro Con­sult­ing, where she pro­vides reg­u­la­to­ry advi­so­ry, com­pli­ance audits, and sus­tain­abil­i­ty con­sult­ing to clients nav­i­gat­ing com­plex envi­ron­men­tal requirements.

When Chrys­tal became more involved in man­ag­ing her family’s tim­ber­land, she found her­self look­ing at the prop­er­ty through the lens of an envi­ron­men­tal engi­neer. As she learned about car­bon seques­tra­tion and emerg­ing envi­ron­men­tal mar­kets, she became inter­est­ed in the oppor­tu­ni­ties and chal­lenges they pre­sent­ed for landown­ers. Today, she is focused on iden­ti­fy­ing ways to incor­po­rate her envi­ron­men­tal engi­neer­ing expe­ri­ence into the car­bon mar­ket­place, a shift in per­spec­tive that con­tin­ues to shape her work.

LOOK­ING BEYOND THE TREES

To Chrys­tal, forestry is about more than grow­ing trees and wait­ing for har­vest. Wildlife habi­tat, recre­ation, con­ser­va­tion ini­tia­tives, and emerg­ing envi­ron­men­tal mar­kets are all ways to enhance land val­ue and pro­vide rev­enue over time. That way of think­ing even­tu­al­ly led her to take a clos­er look at what today’s car­bon mar­kets have to offer.

“Right now, I’m try­ing to come up with solu­tions to solve landown­er issues on the car­bon seques­tra­tion side,” she said. ​“I’m fig­ur­ing out a way to tie it into waste reduc­tion, com­ing up with a pro­gram and a process that can ben­e­fit for­est landown­ers in an incen­tivized manner.”

While she doesn’t get into details, she is opti­mistic about where that work may lead.

“I’m build­ing some­thing, and if it goes the way I hope it will, it’s going to be awesome.”

KEEP­ING THE LEGA­CY ALIVE

Chrystal’s con­nec­tion to the land runs deep. Her family’s forest­land has been passed down through gen­er­a­tions since 1878, when her great-grand­moth­er received the prop­er­ty from her own grandfather.

To hon­or the women who came before them, Chrys­tal and her cousins stepped into a more active role in man­ag­ing the land. Togeth­er, they cre­at­ed MAViAN Farms, build­ing on a forestry lega­cy that had exist­ed for generations.

Though her great-grand­par­ents man­aged both tim­ber and cat­tle, she need­ed an oper­a­tion that fit her lim­it­ed avail­abil­i­ty. Liv­ing in Hous­ton and run­ning a con­sult­ing busi­ness full time made cat­tle imprac­ti­cal, but bees offered a dif­fer­ent way to remain con­nect­ed to the land.

While the hives pro­duce hon­ey, her focus is eco­log­i­cal rather than com­mer­cial. She saw bee­keep­ing as a way to sup­port pol­li­na­tor pop­u­la­tions and strength­en the local ecosys­tem while keep­ing the prop­er­ty active.

For Chrys­tal, stew­ard­ship is about more than man­ag­ing trees or main­tain­ing fam­i­ly prop­er­ty — it is a way of stay­ing con­nect­ed to the land, the peo­ple who came before her, and the lega­cy they left behind.

ADD IT ALL UP

When decid­ing to become a Texas Forestry Asso­ci­a­tion Life Mem­ber, Chrys­tal approached it much like she approach­es her work: practically.

“I think I had already been a mem­ber for maybe about five years. I mean, the math is the math,” she said with a laugh.

But she was quick to point out that the val­ue of mem­ber­ship in the asso­ci­a­tion extend­ed far beyond the numbers.

Ear­ly on, the forestry side of the busi­ness came with a learn­ing curve, so she set out to get a bet­ter han­dle on the field. That desire to learn even­tu­al­ly led her to par­tic­i­pate in the association’s inau­gur­al Lead­ers Emerg­ing Across Forestry (LEAF) pro­gram. Through the pro­gram, she gained a deep­er under­stand­ing of the forestry indus­try while build­ing rela­tion­ships with peo­ple across the entire forestry sector.

The edu­ca­tion, rela­tion­ships, and pro­fes­sion­al net­work she gained through TFA and the LEAF pro­gram con­tin­ue to ben­e­fit her long after the class­es ended.

BUILD­ING FOR THE FUTURE

For Chrys­tal, engi­neer­ing and stew­ard­ship are not sep­a­rate parts of her life. They are two sides of the same philosophy.

Whether she’s explor­ing new oppor­tu­ni­ties for landown­ers, advis­ing clients, or car­ing for fam­i­ly land, she con­tin­ues to apply the same prob­lem-solv­ing mind­set that has guid­ed much of her career. Under­stand­ing what exists today while look­ing for ways to improve what comes next.

From the pages of Texas Forestry mag­a­zine’s MAY/JUNE issue

Texas Forestry Muse­um:Where East Texas Forestry Sto­ries Still Live

As the lunch hour broke in the Piney­woods a cen­tu­ry ago, a sig­nal echoed across the tree­tops. It wasn’t just a stan­dard shift mark­er. It was the ​“corn­bread whis­tle,” a high-pitched note blown from the sawmills to let women know it was time to pull skil­let bread from the oven before their hus­bands returned from the woods.

Today, you can still expe­ri­ence this slice of dai­ly life at the Texas Forestry Muse­um in Lufkin. Here, vis­i­tors explore old com­mis­sary punch cards, his­toric pho­tographs and even the real mill whis­tles that once set the pace for entire towns.

As the muse­um cel­e­brates its 50^th anniver­sary, it offers a door­way back to a dif­fer­ent time. One where East Texas revolved entire­ly around timber.

Step­ping Into the Timeline

What makes this muse­um so spe­cial is that it doesn’t just ask you to read his­to­ry on a plaque. It invites you to step right into it.

The jour­ney kicks off with a walk through the deep roots of the region, chart­ing a time­line that stretch­es from the ear­ly Cad­do farm­ing com­mu­ni­ties of 800 C.E. all the way through major Texas mile­stones like June­teenth in 1865.

But the ener­gy real­ly picks up when you hit the explo­sive lum­ber boom era. In the Vir­gin Tim­ber gallery, the walls are lined with strik­ing, large-for­mat his­toric pho­tographs that instant­ly put the scale of the old woods into per­spec­tive. In one favorite exhib­it pan­el from 1908, log­gers J.W. Getsinger and J.T. Gille­spie pose proud­ly beside a mas­sive vir­gin pine har­vest­ed for the Thomp­son Broth­ers lum­ber com­pa­ny in Doucette, Texas. The exhib­it asks a ques­tion that stops both kids and adults in their tracks: Can you imag­ine cut­ting down these giant trees with only a cross­cut saw and an ax?

Next to those pho­tos, you can see the actu­al tools of the trade used by ear­ly ​“flat­heads,” includ­ing man­u­al cross­cut saws used by the Thomp­son & Tuck­er Lum­ber Co. crews in Willard, Texas, which crews oper­at­ed entire­ly by hand.

From the Woods to the Mod­el Town

The muse­um makes it easy to see how hard work and new tech­nol­o­gy trans­formed the tim­ber indus­try. You can fol­low the boom-era sto­ry by walk­ing among the giant machines: check out the old high-wheel carts that oxen once pulled and see how steam skid­ders with heavy winch­es even­tu­al­ly took over, haul­ing tim­ber out of the woods and onto wait­ing trains.

The exhibits also show how close­ly many East Texas com­mu­ni­ties were tied to the tim­ber industry.

One of the museum’s most detailed dis­plays is a scale mod­el of the Carter-Kel­ly Lum­ber Co. town­site in Man­ning, Texas, depict­ing the com­mu­ni­ty as it appeared in 1928. Built by Robert L. Flournoy in mem­o­ry of Mor­gan M. Flournoy, super­in­ten­dent of Man­ning School, the mod­el gives vis­i­tors a bird’s‑eye view of the homes, rail lines, mill oper­a­tions and lay­out of a sawmill town dur­ing the height of East Texas’ lum­ber era.

A Turn­ing Point for Forestry

The sto­ry doesn’t stop indoors. It con­tin­ues out­side, where you’ll learn about a major turn­ing point for the indus­try. By the mid-20^th cen­tu­ry, most of the vir­gin tim­ber was large­ly gone and dev­as­tat­ing wild­fires fre­quent­ly swept across the cutover lands.

Out on the muse­um grounds, you can look up at a his­toric fire tow­er, the main line of defense against wild­fires from the 1920s through the 1970s. This tow­er marks the moment when East Texas forestry shift­ed from pure extrac­tion to active con­ser­va­tion, fire pre­ven­tion and replant­i­ng. Near­by, inter­ac­tive dis­plays and hands-on activ­i­ties help con­nect younger vis­i­tors to mod­ern forestry careers, show­ing how the indus­try con­tin­ues to evolve.

A Liv­ing Lega­cy for the Forestry Family

What keeps the Texas Forestry Muse­um from feel­ing like just a col­lec­tion of old machines is how per­son­al the expe­ri­ence is for every­one who visits.

Even after fifty years, the muse­um is much more than just an archive. For many East Tex­ans, a walk through the exhibits sparks a sud­den mem­o­ry, like spot­ting a grandfather’s name on an old ros­ter or rec­og­niz­ing a famil­iar face in a fad­ed pho­to­graph of a log­ging crew. For some vis­i­tors, the muse­um offers a per­son­al con­nec­tion to East Texas forestry his­to­ry, a reminder of the fam­i­lies, com­mu­ni­ties and forests that helped shape the region.

So, whether you’re search­ing for a piece of your own his­to­ry or sim­ply a bit of won­der beneath the pines, the Texas Forestry Muse­um is wait­ing to wel­come you home.